Conservatives can’t beat the liberals, so they’re beating up each other instead

The Conservative Party of Canada has found its newest replacement for a strategy: punishment. Not of the Liberals, because they can’t seem to lay a glove on them. Not of Prime Minister Mark Carney, because he barely seems to notice them. Not of the people who actually designed, defended, and sold the campaign that lost.

No, the punishment is being aimed at other major Conservative figures. Doug Ford, Kory Teneycke, Dimitri Soudas, Fred DeLorey, and Caroline Elliott are being put through the grinder because the CPC still won’t do the one thing every serious party has to do after a loss: look at the leader, look at the circle around him, admit what failed, and change.

Full disclosure: I vote Conservative. Prior to this loss, I donated significantly to the federal Conservatives. I also vote Conservative provincially, donate generously, and have given a ton of my time during elections. The party doesn’t owe me anything for that. It was my choice. But I’m a conservative, and I’ll remain one if the party gets its act together. So far, it shows no sign of doing so.

To be brief, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre needed to show humility after the loss. He needed to learn some hard lessons about how and why the Liberals came out ahead. Instead, he doubled down on the idea that he was somehow the real election winner, even as members of Parliament started crossing the floor. He had an opportunity at that point to adjust, stem the tide, and keep the Liberals to a minority. He chose not to. Now they’re in majority territory, Carney’s approvals have soared, and Poilievre’s have sunk.

The CPC’s surprising new argument in this ongoing saga? Its losses are apparently now the reason it’s owed a win. Instead of coming up with a plan to actually win, the party has started treating defeat as a kind of political layaway program. We lost; therefore, we’re due. We failed; therefore, destiny owes us a correction. Every defeat is being reframed as one more step toward some inevitable victory that never seems to arrive.

It feels like each time people point out to the CPC how wildly sad this is getting, and how their numbers keep tanking because of it, they somehow manage to get even more unserious. Instead of taking stock, accepting the loss, taking responsibility for the floor crossings, and stopping this endless discussion about how to shape-shift their way into an eventual win, they say no thanks. No reflection. No humility. No course correction. Just another round of performance politics for a base that’s being told the problem is everyone except the people actually in charge.

And here we are. From loss to floor crossers to “we’ll win because we lost” to “we’re going to destroy Kory Teneycke”—as in, the former director of communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. How many more ways can they find to make this worse? Everyone is quietly wondering now: What’s next? Because it’s clear no one is actually going to turn this around. What is the next pointless, destructive move the CPC will make because it can’t beat the Liberals and feels like it needs to do something?

The news cycle over the past couple of weeks felt like it might tilt, even a little, in the CPC’s favour. We all heard about Carney shouting at his caucus, and in my opinion, this was a perfect opening for the CPC to point out that many in the Liberal caucus are such hopeless idiots that even Carney, their own leader, has to shout at them. That was the attack. That was the angle. It was an opening to hit the Liberal Party as an institution.

Unfortunately, the CPC decided to go the other route. Instead of making the story about Liberal dysfunction, they made it about media unfairness. “See how unfair the media is? They’d never keep the MPs’ names quiet if it was Poilievre doing the shouting!” Maybe that satisfies the already converted, but it doesn’t move the story forward. It doesn’t hurt the Liberals. It doesn’t make Canadians feel like Conservatives are serious. It just makes the CPC look once again like a party more interested in complaining about the refs than winning the game.

Then, after blowing that, stories started circulating that Canada could be headed for a recession. Nothing definite, and not full panic yet, but it was still a good time to put the focus on the Liberal government and ask ministers what specifically is being done to help Canadians with the cost of living, other than another taxpayer-funded rebate. When will the cuts to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program show results? What’s the housing plan? What’s the plan for jobs, productivity, investment, and affordability? These are real questions. They matter to real people, and they were sitting right there waiting to be asked.

Instead, the CPC decided to double down on the argument that Carney is a terrible economist compared to Poilievre, because that’s gone over so well in the past. Then they put out an AI video, Spencer Pratt–style, mocking the term “technical recession” after Carney used it. Within a few days, jobs numbers came out showing Canada was not in a recession and had added 88,000 jobs. So a moment that could have focused on what’s actually wrong in Canadians’ lives was instead turned into another cheap online hit against Carney, another attempt to make Poilievre feel better, and another performance for the base. Then it backfired.

That’s the problem. The CPC keeps confusing online catharsis with political strategy. It keeps treating a good dunk as if it’s the same thing as a good argument. It keeps acting as if the goal is to make the most loyal people feel vindicated for five minutes, instead of persuading people who aren’t already in the tent.

So where does this leave us? Soul searching? Serious meetings about what the hell is wrong with the party and how it can be fixed? Of course not. CPC operatives and influencers, and even one MP, have picked a public fight with people like Ford and Teneycke. Because if the CPC can’t beat the Liberals, it can definitely beat other Conservatives. And why not? Why preserve relationships when you can burn them down for applause from people who already agree with you?

Conservative influencers like Mario Zelaya are posting on X about rooting out “poisonous traitors” in the CPC. Can influencers chase Ford and DeLorey—who, among other things, was the national campaign manager for the CPC in 2021—out of the conservative movement? I doubt it. They can certainly cause problems, which seems to be the point, but what exactly do they hope to achieve? The next Ontario election isn’t until 2030. Do they think Ford is going to step down? Obviously, he won’t. He has a majority. Do they think DeLorey will stop going on the CBC’s Power & Politics? Of course he won’t. He’s part of the panel, and the audience for it isn’t sitting on X waiting for CPC influencers to tell them who the real conservatives are.

So none of this achieves anything real. It doesn’t hurt the Liberals. It doesn’t broaden the Conservative coalition. It doesn’t make Poilievre look stronger. It doesn’t make the CPC look more serious. It just gives the base another “look over here” target, another person to blame for Poilievre’s problems, and another internal fight to distract from the fact that the party still has no clear plan to win.

That’s what this is really about. The CPC can’t admit the problem is the strategy, the leader, the tone, the campaign, the message, and the refusal to learn from defeat. So instead, it now has to find traitors. It has to find saboteurs. It has to find establishment Conservatives, Red Tories, Ford people, media panelists, consultants, former staffers, or anyone else who can be blamed for the fact that Carney is rising and Poilievre is sinking.

It’s not strength. It’s a party punching sideways because it can’t punch up. It’s a movement so terrified of admitting failure that it would rather start a civil war than have an honest conversation.

And the saddest part is that none of the people being attacked are the ones keeping Poilievre from winning. Doug Ford isn’t stopping the CPC from presenting a serious economic message. Kory Teneycke isn’t stopping the CPC from sounding normal to voters outside the base. Fred DeLorey isn’t stopping the CPC from learning why it lost. Caroline Elliott—who narrowly lost the leadership for the BC Conservative Party—isn’t the reason the Liberals are climbing.

The CPC is doing that to itself.

Until the party is willing to face that, this is what we’re going to keep getting. Not a strategy. Not a reset. Not a serious opposition movement ready to govern. Just another round of internal enemies, another purge fantasy, another explanation for why the leader is never responsible, and another performance designed to make the base feel like someone, somewhere, is finally being punished. But the Liberals aren’t being punished. The country isn’t being persuaded. The CPC is just punching itself in the face and calling it a fight.